Never again

Like every Israeli child, I grew up with the memory of the Holocaust. My grandmother came to Palestine from Germany as a young Zionist before World War II. Her family, who stayed behind, perished.

As a kibbutznik “sabra,” I was raised to believe that we were different from Diaspora Jews because we were not weak and helpless. Zionism, I was taught, was supposed to liberate us from the “shtetl mentality” of self-pity and passivity.

But over time, I learned that the lessons of the Holocaust extend beyond its historical context.

As a tank company commander after the First Lebanon War, I was asked to give a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day. For the first time, I had to articulate the lessons of the Holocaust to myself and to my soldiers. I spoke of three main lessons:

1. We must not be as helpless as the Jews of Europe were. That is why serving in the army of the nation-state’s Jewish people is so important.
2. We must use the power we have morally and not become victimizers who commit the crimes that were committed against us.
3. We can’t be indifferent bystanders to crimes against others, as most of the world was when we were slaughtered.

These lessons guided me throughout my time in the army. When I heard some of my soldiers expressing themselves in a racist way against Arabs, I showed them the American television movie The Wave (1981), which demonstrates how easily any society can slip into fascism. I tried to help them understand that the racism that led the Nazis to commit terrible acts against our people and against others is not unique and inherent in the character of the German people, but rather a phenomenon that can happen to any nation.

Later, as a diplomat in Washington, DC, I was moved when I learned about the partnership between Jews and African Americans during the US Civil Rights Movement, powerfully expressed by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walking hand-in-hand with Martin Luther King Jr. in a march in Selma, Alabama (1965).

When I served as Israel’s Consul General to New England, I naturally worked to assist Jewish communities in combating antisemitism, but I also learned about other minority communities, including the Armenian American community. The historical similarities between our peoples struck me, and Israel’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide dismayed me. As a diplomat I could understand Realpolitik; however, there is no justification for denying the atrocity that led Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish legal scholar, to coin the term “genocide.”

This further ingrained in me that the best way to confront the evil of antisemitism is not by insisting on its uniqueness but by building coalitions with other communities that suffer from racism and xenophobia.

I always knew there was racism among my people, and it was always Jewish racism that angered me the most. I felt responsible for actions carried out in my name. Having suffered so terribly from racism, we above all must reject it. That is why I strongly identified with the statement made by then-IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan (2016) when he warned, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, about phenomena occurring in Israel that echoed Germany’s past before the war. His words cost him the chance to become Chief of Staff.

Even then, I did not believe that open racists and Jewish supremacists would one day become leading ministers—or that IDF soldiers would admire them instead of upholding the values of restraint and purity of arms that once defined us.

The terrible massacre on October 7th shocked me, as it did all the residents of the country and the Jewish people. I lost family and friends. I have no doubt that we had to respond with military force to significantly degrade the capabilities of Hamas and create a reality where the residents of the Gaza envelope could return to their homes in safety. The same type of action was also required in the north against Hezbollah so that the residents on the border of Lebanon, including my family in Kibbutz Manara, could rebuild their communities and return to their homes.

But what frightened me most were the voices—including from people I respected—lost, saying “all Gazans are Hamas” or that “there are no innocent people in Gaza.” I understood the anger and desire for revenge, but I feared Hamas would win the battle for our souls if they succeeded in making us as murderous and vengeful as they are.

As I watch the killing and starvation of innocent Gazans today, and as I see the daily organized violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, I feel we are losing our humanity, just like a battered child who becomes a battering parent.

I know I will be accused of outrageous comparisons to the Holocaust, which was undoubtedly the most shocking event in human history. But in my opinion, the legal definition of what is being done in our name is less important—whether it’s war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. What matters is stopping the senseless killing spree in Gaza and thereby saving the hostages and soldiers who are risking their lives in a war that has lost all purpose and direction.

When the killing and destruction we’ve been causing recently stops, we won’t be able to bring back to life all the unnecessary victims on both sides, but I hope the day will come when we take responsibility for the horrors we’ve committed.

Only then, perhaps, can we begin to repair and return to our humanity. I hope this process will also include the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside us, which—regardless of the events of October 7—is a Zionist necessity.

Perhaps it is precisely out of horror that a new urgency will rise. Perhaps Israelis will finally recognize that we need a political agreement to replace the terrible cycles of violence.

Perhaps the darkness indeed precedes the dawn.